one of those things was education. i'm very passionate about education because it's made such a big difference in my life. but here we are at a time in the world, the information age, the age of technology, and yet 30% of people who enter high school in this country do not graduate. 44% of people who start a four-year college program do not finish it in four years. what is that about? think back to a darker time in this our history. two hundred years ago when slavery was going on it was illegal to educate a slave, particularly to teach them to read. why do you think that was? because when you educate a man, you liberate a man. and there i was as a youngster placing myself in the same situation that a horrible institution did because i wasn't taking advantage of the education. i was a horrible student. most of my classmates thought i was the stupidest person in the world. they called me dummy. i was the butt of all the jokes. now, admittedly, it was a bad environment. single-parent home, you know, my mother and father h